Art of the Pentagon – Vol. 2

In this month’s feature, we bring more artwork from the halls of the Pentagon. The five-sided “Puzzle Palace” is one of the world’s largest office buildings and, as one may expect, there are miles of corridors. In fact, there are 17.5 miles of corridors. As well, there are 6.5 million square feet of office space (including the hallways in that figure). That’s a lot of wall space for artwork and, as a result, nearly every major American aviation artist in history as well as many foreign artists have works represented there.

As detailed in Vol. 1 of this series, the artworks are almost all originals. The actual oil paintings hang in the halls and in senior staff offices. A top ranked official in the USAF, for instance, will qualify for just one artwork from the USAF Art Collection. Senior political figures might qualify for two. Only the service secretaries and the Secretary of Defense qualify for more than that by official policy.

The artworks presented in this feature have hung in the open halls of the building, in private offices, in the suites of the top generals of the Joint Staff and in the corridors of the leadership. This second volume covers the history of aviation, seen through the eyes of the artists of the Pentagon, from after the Korean War until the modern day.

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